Vitesco Technologies Group AG

XETRA:VTSC

Earnings Call Analysis

Vitesco Improves Profitability Amid Market Challenges

In the first half of 2024, Vitesco Technologies managed to grow its profitability to 4% despite a challenging market and flat global light vehicle production. Sales slightly exceeded EUR 2 billion, with significant improvements expected in Q3 and Q4. The Electrification segment showed signs of recovery, with an order intake of over EUR 3 billion, including EUR 1.3 billion from Electrification alone. Core ICE business saw margins increase to over 10% from the previous year's 8.6%. Despite some early struggles, the company aims to achieve profitability in Electrification by Q3, with substantial gains in Q4.

Navigating a Challenging Market Landscape

The company reported a decline in sales, reaching just above EUR 2 billion. This marks a 17% decrease compared to the same quarter last year, reflecting broader challenges in the automotive sector, particularly in Europe. Despite the decline, the management acknowledged that these results were in line with expectations given the planned reduction in noncore business activities. The global light vehicle production remained flat, with fluctuations noted in major markets like China and North America, which weren't enough to offset downturns in Europe.

Profitability Amidst Declining Sales

Despite lower sales figures, the company achieved a higher adjusted EBIT margin of 4%. This improvement is attributed to positive mix effects and effective cost containment efforts, showcasing the resilience of its core operations. Notably, the core ICE business saw sales of EUR 806 million and an EBIT margin increase to 13.7%, demonstrating the strength and reliability of this segment in providing profitability.

Electrification Division Recovery

The Electrification Solutions division suffered a slight decline in sales to EUR 787 million while holding its adjusted EBIT margin at around -4%. A significant positive point is the quarter-over-quarter recovery of about 30% in sales, indicating a rebound in project ramp-ups. Management expressed confidence that this segment would reach breakeven by Q3 and achieve substantial profitability improvement in Q4. This outlook is bolstered by the anticipated growth in order intake, particularly from Asia.

Strategic Shifts and Divestments

The company is making significant strides in phasing out its noncore business, which has seen a reduction by 40%. This strategic focus allowed for a consolidated effort on core business activities, particularly in Electrification and core ICE segments. Furthermore, management's plan includes a robust investment into Electrification, expecting the CapEx ratio to rise to around 7% of sales reflecting ongoing product launches and development.

Revised Financial Guidance for 2024

Due to market conditions, the management revised its financial outlook for 2024, expecting sales to range around EUR 8.1 billion, with an adjusted EBIT margin of approximately 4%. This revision accounts for heightened volatility in order call-offs from major OEMs. Additionally, they projected a free cash flow of around -EUR 400 million, attributing this primarily to lessened profitability caused by earlier burdens associated with Contract Manufacturing. They assured that positive free cash flow would follow in the latter half of the year.

Market Dynamics and Order Intakes

Interest in Electrification products appears to be on the rise, with order intake exceeding EUR 3 billion for the entire portfolio during this time. Approximately EUR 1.3 billion of this total came from Electrification, showing a trend toward recovery after a slowdown earlier in the year. The company emphasizes that, although the current ruminations in the market delay orders, they foresee a faster order intake in the latter half of 2024, particularly from the Asian markets.

Key Takeaways

The earnings call underscores a turbulent yet strategically shifting phase for the company. While the sales decline reflects external market pressures, the focus on enhancing operational profitability and strategic positioning towards Electrification appears promising. Investors should note the expected turnaround in Q3 and Q4 profitability in Electrification, matched with ambitious but cautious financial forecasts for the year.

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q2

[Operator]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Vitesco Technologies Group AG Conference Call Q2 H1 2024. [Operator Instructions] Let me now turn the floor over to your host, Heiko Eber.

[Heiko Eber, executive]

Thank you, operator. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm very happy to welcome you to our today's call on financial results of the second quarter 2024. As usual, the press release, the presentation and our half year reports have been published today at 7:00 a.m. CET on our Investor Relations home page. And for sure, we will afterwards provide a recording and a transcript of this webcast.

Now before we look at our today's agenda, as usual, I'm sure you have all taken notice of our well-known disclaimer. Looking at the agenda, Andreas Wolf, our CEO; and Sabine Nitzsche, our CFO, have joined the webcast to guide you through the key information in our presentation on group and divisional level.

In addition, we will talk about our cash flow and balance sheet as well as our updated guidance. And afterwards, those will be available for our Q&A session. And now without further ado, let me hand over to our CEO, Andreas, please.

[Andreas Wolf, executive]

Yes. Thank you, Heiko, and thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen, for joining us today. The first half year 2024 is in the books. Unfortunately, the market continued to be challenging. Global light vehicle production saw more or less a flattish development. However, in a volatile market environment, we increased profitability to 4%, thanks to less dilutive business, positive mix effects, hence generally our resilient portfolio.

Consequently, we will see further improvement throughout the next 2 quarters, thus ensuring that we meet our full year targets. Our sales came in slightly above EUR 2 billion. With regards to our free cash flow, this figure ends up quite negative. This is mainly two reasons: first, change in our form of favorable payment terms with Contract Manufacturing; and second, the return of spinoff-related advance payments to Continental.

After all, it aligns with our plans, as already mentioned several times before. Speaking of our Electrification sales, we see the first indications of recovery as some delayed project ramp-ups materialized in quarter 2 2024. We assume this trend will continue during the next quarters and will lead to further improvements.

Another proof point for market recovery is our order intake level, which came in at over EUR 3 billion for our complete product portfolio. Here, Electrification alone accounted for roughly EUR 1.3 billion. I know this is still below previous year's numbers, but it shows the Electrification market is trending into the right direction again after a short breather towards the end of last year until the beginning of this year.

Even though we still see some shift in the market to a later date with regards to Electrification order intake, the overall market dynamic stays intact. Latest innovations in battery technology and increasingly efficient newer car models will support the trend in the longer run.

And one last highlight from China. We further expanded our Electrification product portfolio in China with our battery management electronics. This demonstrates that our strategic decision to strengthen our Electrification footprint in China, especially with local players is continuing to bear fruit.

And this is only the beginning as we will roll out this product on a global scale for major global OEMs. And since this question will naturally come in our Q&A session, I would like to make my statement here. We will be profitable with an Electrification in quarter 3 with another substantial profitability step-up in quarter 4 this year.

Nevertheless, this will not totally compensate for the losses we had to bear in the first half year 2024. Let me now come back to the numbers. The EUR 2 billion sales are corresponding to a decrease of about 17% compared to quarter 2 2023. However, the sales development is in line with our expectations, considering the lack of sales from divested business and the expected decline in Contract Manufacturing. As mentioned before, supported by our positive price mix, we managed to increase our adjusted EBIT margin to 4%.

Our CapEx of 5.9% of sales increased over last year's levels. We still have many Electrification product launches in 2024, which need the respective investments to support our growth in Electrification. Our free cash flow was burdened by different special effects, which again explained on the right-hand side. However, we will return to our normalized seasonal pattern in the second half of 2024. And around 39%, the equity ratio remains at a very solid level.

Let's move on to the market development. The worldwide light vehicle production saw a slightly negative development in quarter 2 of 2024. Similar to quarter 1, 2024, China and North America saw an increase in volumes. However, those could not compensate for the decline in Europe and the rest of the world.

As you can see from the bar chart on the right-hand side, our reported group level sales decreased by over 17%. Organically, our Electrification and core ICE sales underperformed the global light vehicle production by about 3.4 percentage points. Reason being that almost all major markets underperformed on group level.

The first half year was a tough right. However, we have shown, once again, we are able to perform well even in challenging situations. And with that, you will now receive more insights into our financials from our CFO, Sabine Nitzsche.

[Sabine Nitzsche, executive]

Thank you, Andreas, and a warm welcome from my side. So let us now focus on our top and bottom line development at group level. Since Andreas already explained our core KPIs, I will only focus on the most relevant aspects.

Our organic sales decreased by 11.5%. That excludes currency-related headwinds of 1.4 percentage points and consolidation effects. However, even though we saw a decline in sales, we managed to achieve higher profitability, thanks to positive mix effects and our continuous cost containment efforts.

Also, I would like to highlight our core technologies, including both Electrification and core ICE. Sales came in at EUR 1.6 billion and we further improved our adjusted EBIT margin to 4.5%. Also, please keep in mind that we are managing in parallel, our ramp-down in noncore business, which reduced by about 40%.

To sum it up, our Q2 was challenging, but in line with our expectations. Let us now have a look at each division. And as always, we will start with our Powertrain Solutions division. The main reason for declining sales was, as mentioned, the planned ramp-down of our core activities, noncore activities, which decreased almost by EUR 270 million.

Please remember that the previous year's figures does not include higher sales and Contract Manufacturing, but also for meanwhile, divested businesses. Overall, sales came in slightly lower than EUR 1.3 billion with a further improved adjusted EBIT margin of 9.4%. And I have to say, as always demonstrated -- as already demonstrated in Q1, this is very impressive to see an increase in profitability of our core ICE business again.

Even though our sales declined to EUR 806 million, we managed to further improve adjusted EBIT margin to 13.7%. However, this was not only driven by the resilience and strength of Core ICE portfolio, but also due to extraordinary items.

Now let's move to our Electrification Solutions division. We saw a volatile market environment in almost all major markets, which translated into a slightly declining sales of EUR 787 million. With regards to profitability, we managed to keep adjusted EBIT margin rather flat at about minus 4%. This number reflects the other factors, the increased cost for our project ramp-ups in Electrification.

And one note on our core ICE business. We further improved adjusted EBIT margin to 6.3%, making another step into the right direction. Now I would like to provide more transparency on our categories: Electrification, core ICE and noncore. Given the still challenging market environment, sales and profitability in Electrification remained at the previous year's level.

However, we made a significant improvement compared to the beginning of the year and saw an increase in sales by about 30% quarter-on-quarter. With regards to profitability, we are, of course, seeing a higher ramp-up cost for new products in near future. In addition, some of our customers are switching towards the next-generation products such as EMR4 earlier than planned.

This means we are pushing our projects, which we were up and running and, at the same time, need to ramp up the newest product generation into scale. In addition, this process is taking more time than initially planned, given the challenging market environment.

With adjusting our cost base and due to upcoming volumes from new projects, we are confident to become profitable in Electrification in Q3 with substantial profitability step-ups in Q4. Core ICE sales came in at about EUR 1.3 billion and we managed to further increase our adjusted EBIT margin to over 10% from previous year's 8.6%.

Next to the already mentioned onetime effect, this again demonstrates the resilience of our core ICE business, which continues to the funding of our Electrification growth. And last but not least, we are taking a huge step in phasing out our noncore business, as we have always promised.

I just want to pause here for a brief moment. Within the Electrification area, we saw the slow start in Q1. We gained traction in Q2, and we will be profitable from Q3 onwards. Our very resilient core ICE business has seen gradual step-ups, providing attractive EBIT margins. However, we are missing sales and therefore contribute to margin for the full year basis, we will be on a similar profitable level as last year.

And the ramp down of noncore, especially in Contract Manufacturing continues to progress according to plan with a profitability margin around [indiscernible] 0 on a full year basis. On Slide 11, I want to provide some insights on our cash development. Our operating cash flow came in lower compared to last year's quarter.

As explained several times before, this was driven by lower accounts payable associated with the change of payment terms within Contract Manufacturing. Furthermore, the number also includes the repayment of spin-off-related funding from Continental, which led to an additional cash outflow.

Our investments increased, resulting in investing cash flow of minus EUR 176 million. This was mainly due to higher spending for project ramp-ups in the area of Electrification. As a result, our free cash flow for the period came in at minus EUR 388 million. And I know this figure seems quite high. But please remember, we have communicated that a large part of this, let me say, special effects will come due in Q2.

Talking about our financing cash flow. This was characterized by utilization of loan agreements. Hence, it came in positive at EUR 97 million. This all resulted in a significantly lower but still solid cash flow.

Now let's move on to our balance sheet structure. Our net working capital intensity increased to 9.2% of sales and reflects our significant decrease in accounts payable related to planned phase out of Contract Manufacturing. Therefore, the working capital intensity is distorted as our payment terms within Contract Manufacturing came down from 9 months to 30 days.

The net debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio in -- came in positive at 0.2%. Given the significant cash outflow in Q2, we are reporting for this first time a net debt position of EUR 189 million at the end of June. However, the financing situation remains very comfortable.

And to finalize our equity ratio, it remains at a very solid level of about 39%. As you can see, we continue to have a very robust balance sheet structure and cash position. I assume you're also our ad hoc release roughly 2 weeks ago. Based on the development in first half '24 and [indiscernible] recovery within the automotive industry, we downgraded our guidance for the fiscal year 2024.

This applies not only to our global light vehicle production forecast on the right-hand side, but in particular to our guidance on group level on the left-hand side of that page. When talking about our group sales, we now forecast sales of EUR 8.1 billion, plus/minus EUR 150 million. Considering the very volatile call-offs from major OEMs across all regions. The adjusted EBIT margin will presumably come in at 4% plus/minus 20 basis points.

The main reason to tight to lower sales, which resulted in lower contribution margin. Due to the high number of product launches this year, especially in the second half of 2024, we expect our CapEx ratio to come in at about 7% of sales for the entire year fully focused to invest into Electrification.

Turning over to our free cash flow. This is now expected to be around minus EUR 400 million resulting from lower profitability. Since the main burden related to Contract Manufacturing was tied in half year 1, 2024, we will see a positive figure for the remainder of the year. And please remember, the outlook for the fiscal year 2024 does not consider any effect related to the integration into Schaeffler.

With that, I have reached the end of my presentation. Thank you very much for listening, and back to you, Heiko.

[Heiko Eber, executive]

Thank you, Sabine, and thank you very much, Andreas. Ladies and gentlemen, before we enter the Q&A session for our today's webcast, I would like to hand over to Andreas for some final words.

[Andreas Wolf, executive]

Yes. Thank you, Heiko. As you all know, this is my last earnings call. My contract as CEO of Vitesco Technologies will end, and that was the planning as always end of September, means end of next month. So over the last 3 years, I enjoy being very close to the capital market and getting direct feedback about Vitesco's performance.

Personally, from you and also indirectly via the share price performance. Those years were the best of my professional life, transforming a nonperforming Powertrain division to a new stand-alone company with a decent performance level.

It is a great pleasure for me to check the last proof point showing that we can earn money with electrical components. All this was only possible with a great team in the 2 divisions, the group functions up to the Executive Board members. My big thank you goes to all of them. Special thanks also to the Investor Relations team, which intensively accompanied me during the last years. With that, I give back to Heiko.

[Heiko Eber, executive]

Thank you very much, Andreas. Operator, we would now be ready to take the first question.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions]

So the first question comes from Marc-René Tonn, Warburg Research.

[Marc-Rene Tonn, analyst]

It will be basically two. The first one would be on order intake. And it's good to see that we see some better momentum in the second quarter when compared to the start of the year. Nevertheless, it would be great to get some more insight on how much postponements you are expecting with regard to the order side? So let's say, how much better would you expect the second half year to be and going into 2025?

So generally, when we look at the -- around EUR 10 billion run rate, I think we just kind of expected a year ago or half a year ago. Is there any opportunity that perhaps a slightly lower number for this year, maybe then catched up with the quarter by a higher number in 2025. So just the orders also being put in the market a bit later, but in overall volumes, the same magnitude as we would have expected before.

That would be the first question. Second question is a bit about the underperformance compared to global light vehicle production in the core ICE within Powertrain. When do you expect this to end? Is it related to the major rundown of one specific contract with one customer? Or is it something we should expect also for the quarters ahead? And as I said, third question added to that one.

When we take into consideration that you're expecting Electrification earnings to substantially improve in the second half, after around EUR 60 million negative adjusted EBIT in Q2 that probably now also taking into consideration your revised guidance would mean that the core ICE, whether it's the [indiscernible] the ICE business or Powertrain business must be, let's say, weaker in the second half. But some more additional insight on that one would be great as well.

[Andreas Wolf, executive]

Okay. So let's sort a little bit the questions. I will start with the first one. Marc-René in relation to the order intake. There will be more speed, higher order intake in the second half of 2024. One thing which I covered somehow with a sidenote is of importance. We see especially on the Electrification side that the orders, the momentum, the speed goes into Asia, specifically into China.

A year ago, we decided that we have to focus more on China. We kicked off a special program to focus on the business there and to basically cope with the momentum being it speed-wise or on the innovation side in China. And we are ready now.

And that's somehow hidden in all the documentation, but we are strong in China. We will gain even more momentum and precise noe was that we start this battery business in China. So we expect significantly higher order intake in Electrification in the second half of 2024 and a large part coming from this dynamic part of the world means Asia, China. I don't know...

[Sabine Nitzsche, executive]

I can take the second question. So the question here is based on my understanding, our core ICE business came in at EUR 806 million versus previous year EUR 926 million in Powertrain Solutions -- Core ICE business and Powertrain Solutions.

And the question is why is that? This clearly goes into the category where we said we consolidated our businesses. So this means focus on our core business. And here, you see that we ramped down or we sold a few parts of our businesses like in Italy and Emitec. And this result, you see here in our sales.

On the other side, what you see is that we improved significantly on our EBIT margin from previous year, and this is exactly the strategy and the focus which Vitesco has that we ramped our noncore and increase our core business to improve profitability, and this is the result from that.

And Electrification earnings development is the third question, improvement. As we mentioned, this is clearly expected starting from Q3 onwards. So we will see in Q3 that we reached breakeven situation and then improve further in Q4 and onwards.

[Andreas Wolf, executive]

And maybe I can add to that. We give this information because we also wanted to make clear that we don't have a quarter with a breakeven, and then we are basically moving sidewards that's not the case. So we will see profitability in Q4.

Now there was the question of is the Powertrain Solutions going down because if I assume you're sitting in front of your Excel sheet, you might come to different numbers. We are a little bit conservative in the sense of what will happen in the second half of the year because we don't know exactly the volume development. There's too many negative political, economical points we have to take into account.

And therefore, we don't follow exactly what [ axle ] says, but our gut feeling that the second half of the year might be difficult. Maybe that explains the guidance we have given and shown around 4%, a little bit lower than what we expected at the beginning of the year.

[Marc-Rene Tonn, analyst]

Thank you very much for all the support and insight you provided to us as analysts in all the earnings calls, conferences, road shows. We could enjoy together in the past quarters and years.

[Andreas Wolf, executive]

Yes, you're welcome, Marc-René.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions]

Okay. There are no further questions. I give the floor back to Heiko Eber.

[Heiko Eber, executive]

Thank you. So as the number of questions does not really come as a surprise given our, let's say, special situation, I guess we can close today's call. Nevertheless, if there are more questions coming up afterwards, feel free to reach out to our IR team.

Depending on the merger progress, this might be, as Andreas already said, the last Vitesco Technologies conference call. Thank you for following our story and being part of our journey. We are very much looking forward to continuing our intent and fruitful discussion on our story going forward within the new Schaeffler AG. Have a good day, and talk to you soon. Bye-bye.